The Scandalous Love of a Duke. Jane Lark

the boys cavorting in the lake. They seemed oblivious to the girls obscured by the curtain of leaves.

      They were splashing water at each other, shouting and baiting one another, laughing. John, pale-skinned, lean and athletic, lunged at Katherine’s brother, gripped his shoulders and pushed him under water. The game grew more aggressive. Phillip thrust up and retaliated, lunging back at John, and when John dodged him, Phillip dived beneath the water and pulled John under.

      All the boys, a dozen or more of John’s friends from Oxford, broke into an uproar then, as the game became a mêlée.

      They were not boys, though, not anymore, no more than she was a girl. They were young men, and she was on the brink of womanhood. She could be married now if she wished. The problem was the only person she wished to marry was unattainable. John.

      “We should go,” Heather breathed beside her. “We shouldn’t be here.”

      Katherine turned.

      Eleanor made a mischievous face at her older cousin. “Killjoy.”

      “Give them their privacy,” Heather pressed.

      Eleanor pouted, she was only thirteen. “We didn’t know they were going to swim—”

      “And that is precisely why we should go back before we are missed,” Heather caught hold of Eleanor’s arm. “Come on, they will start the celebrations soon.”

      The other girls began peeling away.

      Katherine would have to go back too, but she would rather be in the water. Her gaze returned to the lake. The day was hot, and the heat was heavy, clinging and oppressive. She understood why they’d shed their clothes and dived in.

      “Kate!” Eleanor called, in an are-you-coming voice.

      Katherine glanced back and nodded before taking an irresistible final look at the boys.

      John was standing in the shallow water, near where the lake dropped over a weir into a cascade, taunting her brother.

      The lake rose to the indent of muscle at his hip.

      Katherine’s breath caught, trapped in her lungs.

      He’d lost the coltish look he’d had a few years ago when she’d first met him, he was physically magnificent now. He was over six feet tall, sinuous and muscular. She longed to touch him and her heart raced as warmth flooded her veins.

      “Kate!” Eleanor called again.

      John’s head turned and his ice-blue eyes spun in the direction of the trees where she was hiding. His gaze reached between the leaves as they stirred into motion on the warm breeze sweeping up from the ornamental lake. Katherine felt the intensity in his eyes.

      There was an aura about John, an attraction which drew everyone in.

      His looks were striking and he had a presence which captured people’s attention when he was in a room.

      He was born to lead people, or perhaps bred to do so.

      His fingers lifted and swept his damp jet-black hair off his brow, but his gaze didn’t leave the trees.

      He had an inherent grace too.

      He was calm and silent in nature, though strong-willed. He won most arguments with her brother. But he had an instinctive awareness of others, and he’d been kind to her. John had acted like a brother to her. He was always considerate. He’d included her even when Phillip forgot to, and John had never grown tired of her dogged company as Phillip sometimes did.

      At what point her feelings had changed from sisterly to something else, she couldn’t say. Perhaps she’d always felt differently about John. But now it was obsession.

      His gaze seemed to strike hers, though surely he had not seen her. She smiled. All the girls in his family were stunningly beautiful, it carried from their mothers. In John that beauty was breathtakingly masculine. She could not take her eyes off him when she was near him.

      “John!” her brother called.

      John’s gaze ripped away, his awareness disengaging from the trees and returning to the lake.

      “Kate!”

      Katherine caught her breath, dragging air into her lungs, and turned back.

      Eleanor and the others were already at the top of the slope looking down.

      Katherine lifted her hand to say she was coming, and then began to climb.

       ~

       Egypt, December, Seven years later

      John let the handle of the spade rest against his midriff, set one hand on his lean waist and wiped his brow with his forearm. Then he lifted the wide-brimmed leather hat from his head and tipped his gaze to the endlessly clear, blue sky.

      God, it was hot here, but it was the middle of a bloody desert.

      “Water, please.” He looked at one of the native men in his train. Almost instantly the water skin was in John’s hand.

      The warm fluid slid down his throat, relieving the dryness.

      He handed the skin back.

      They’d found a new tomb but it was buried beneath centuries of sand.

      Dropping his hat back on his head, John then bent and began digging again. His blade slipped easily into the sand, but half of each shovel load slid back into the hole. He cursed and increased his pace.

      “My Lord, I have it!” Yassah, the man who’d been John’s right hand for years, called. John let his spade fall and moved to where Yassah worked, dropping to his knees to scoop sand out with his bare hands.

      “It is the entrance.” There was a flare of excitement in John’s chest. The hours of hunting and digging were worth it for this moment of success.

      Before Egypt, John had drifted, despondent. This was why he had come and this was why he stayed.

      “It is open, robbed,” Yassah stated. He was on his knees too.

      Empty. Damn. But there would still be the paintings. John leant back, resting his buttocks on his heels. “Hand me the spade.”

      Later, John sat beneath the canopy before his tent, in a canvas chair, his feet resting on the sand. The sky was red, and the sun glowed on the horizon, about to fall. Then suddenly it literally dropped over the edge of the world, leaving only the blue-black darkness and a million glinting stars, the stars he’d seen painted on the ceiling of every temple.

      The sun had never set like this in England.

      He drew on the tip of a thin cigar and then let his hand fall when he exhaled.

      The tomb they’d discovered today had been an official’s. It was empty, but it wasn’t treasure which excited John anyway. What thrilled him was the emotion of the search and the find.

      John took another draw on his cigar.

      He was in a thoughtful mood, brooding.

      His gaze reached up to the darkness and the stars. The black of night was like polished jet here, not the dull pitch it was at home.

      When his grandfather had packed John off on the grand tour to sow his wild oats abroad, the intention had been that John would return with his youthful dissipated fire burnt out. The only problem was that nothing in England drew John back.

      The images from the dream he’d had last night crowded into his head. It was a dream he’d had a thousand times. This was the root of his melancholy mood. He always felt like this when he’d dreamt it.

      In the dream, he was a child, looking from the window of his grandfather’s grand black coach. He saw his mother, with her dress clutched in one hand as she ran behind them, reaching towards him. His stepfather was there too, behind her, his expression violent with anger. But it wasn’t only a dream,